[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: The Battle of the Pump

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The Battle of the Pump

October 7, 2004
 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 



 

Of all the shortsighted policies of President Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney, none have been worse than their
opposition to energy conservation and a gasoline tax. If we
had imposed a new gasoline tax after 9/11, demand would
have been dampened and gas today would probably still be $2
a gallon. But instead of the extra dollar going to Saudi
Arabia - where it ends up with mullahs who build madrasas
that preach intolerance - that dollar would have gone to
our own Treasury to pay down our own deficit and finance
our own schools. In fact, the Bush energy policy should be
called No Mullah Left Behind. 

Our own No Child Left Behind program has not been fully
financed because the tax revenue is not there. But thanks
to the Bush-Cheney energy policy, No Mullah Left Behind has
been fully financed and is now the gift that keeps on
giving: terrorism. 

Mr. Bush says we're in "a global war on terrorism.'' That's
right. But that war is rooted in the Arab-Muslim world.
That means there is no war on terrorism that doesn't
involve helping this region onto a more promising path for
its huge population of young people - too many of whom are
unemployed or unemployable because their oil-rich regimes
are resistant to change and their religious leaders are
resisting modernity. 

A former Kuwaiti information minister, Sad bin Tefla, wrote
an article in a London Arabic daily, Al Sharq Al Awsat,
last Sept. 11 entitled "We Are All Bin Laden.'' He asked
why Muslim scholars and clerics had eagerly supported
fatwas condemning Salman Rushdie to death after he wrote a
novel deemed insulting to Islam, "The Satanic Verses,'' but
to this day no Muslim cleric has issued a fatwa condemning
Osama bin Laden for murdering nearly 3,000 innocent
civilians, badly damaging Islam. 

Building a decent Iraq is necessary to help reverse such
trends, but it is not sufficient. We need a much more
comprehensive approach, particularly if we fail in Iraq.
The Bush team does not offer one. It has treated the
Arab-Israeli issue with benign neglect, failed to find any
way to communicate with the Arab world and adopted an
energy policy that is supporting the worst Arab oil regimes
and the worst trends. Phil Verleger, one of the nation's
top energy consultants and a longtime advocate of a gas
tax, puts it succinctly: "U.S. energy policy today is in
support of terrorism - not the war on terrorism." 

We need to dramatically cut our consumption of oil and
bring the price back down to $20 a barrel. Nothing would do
more to stimulate reform in the Arab-Muslim world. Oil
regimes do not have to modernize or govern well. They just
buy off their people and their mullahs. Governments without
oil have to reform to create jobs. People do not change
when you tell them they should - they change when they tell
themselves they must. 

The Arab-Muslim world is in a must-change human development
crisis, "but oil is like a narcotic that kills a lot of the
pain for them and prevents real change,'' says David
Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. 

Where is all the innovation in the Arab world today? In the
places with little or no oil: Bahrain is working on labor
reform, just signed a free-trade agreement with the U.S.
and held the first elections in the Arab gulf, allowing
women to run and vote. Dubai has made itself into a
regional service center. And Jordan has a free-trade
agreement with the U.S. and is trying to transform itself
into a knowledge economy. Who is paralyzed or rolling back
reforms? Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, all now awash in oil
money. 

When did Jordan begin privatizing and deregulating its
economy and upgrading its education system? In 1989 - after
oil prices had slumped and the Arab oil states cut off
Jordan's subsidies. In 1999, before Jordan signed its U.S.
free-trade accord, its exports to America totaled $13
million. This year, Jordan will export over $1 billion
worth of goods to the U.S. In the wake of King Abdullah
II's reforms, Jordan's economy is growing at an annual rate
of over 7 percent, the government is installing computers
and broadband Internet links in every school, and it will
soon require anyone who wants to study Islamic law and
become a mosque preacher to first get a B.A. in something
else, so mosque leaders won't just come from those who
can't do anything else. "We had to go through a crisis to
accept the need for reform," says Jordan's planning
minister, Bassem Awadallah. 

We have the power right now to stimulate similar trends
across the Arab world. It's the best way to fight a global
war on terrorism. If only we had a president and vice
president tough enough to fight this war. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07friedman.html?ex=1098173702&ei=1&en=7737e27d98215ac0


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